Spotlight on: Career Services
“You can save yourself a lot of frustration if you approach your career intentionally,” says Career Services director Diann Lloyd-Dennis. “That’s what drives me the most: the idea that knowledge equips the students to take control of their career instead of letting their career happen to them.” The Career Services team at Bay State is here to give students that knowledge, to guide and support them—throughout their school years and even after graduation—towards successful careers. One of Lloyd-Dennis’s favorite aspects of her work is helping students find careers that they didn’t even know were available. “I love to help a student understand all the places they can go and all the things they can do, and that is very different by program.”
With a career like Nursing, “there is obviously a strong relationship between what they’re studying and what they hope to do, so the decisions are more like geography, work setting, specialization within the career,” Lloyd-Dennis says. So when asking a Nursing student where they might see themselves working, “I’m not necessarily talking about a company, but do you want to be in a hospital, a clinic, in pediatrics, in a prison, on a cruise ship—even at the MBTA. I recently worked with someone who wanted to be a school nurse, so we found out how that works. Those are some of the things that happen when the relationship between the program and career is direct.”
But for a student in Management or Criminal Justice, the path might be less clear, and Career Services is there to help, especially if you visit them early in your time at Bay State. “I first say, ‘Tell me everything you know about what you think you might want to do after graduation,’” Lloyd-Dennis says. “I want to make sure they’re in the right program, choosing the right electives, and that we have a plan that’s going to piggyback on their education and make them ready to transition into the career they’re looking for.” She points out that students often want to join the FBI, but while the Bureau isn’t looking for Criminal Justice majors, it does want accountants and linguists, “so if you want to get into the FBI, we need to figure out if you’re in the right program and gathering the right experience.”
Networking connections are also key. Career Services helps students navigate a variety of avenues, including LinkedIn, professional associations, networking seminars, and internships. “We’re also going to help them identify employers, because not all employers are visible,” she notes. “For example, most people have never heard of AON, the largest risk-management company in the world. They have a headquarters in Boston and they love Finance majors.”
Lloyd-Dennis adds that at Bay State, “we’re a small enough school that we can work much more intensely with an individual student than, say, Northeastern. With bigger schools, even with a large career staff, a student’s direct access to a career coach is sometimes just practically limited. Here, we pass them in the halls, they drop by our office—that’s a unique benefit of being at Bay State.”
Come talk to Career Services, and learn what they have to offer you!